Monthly Archives: February 2013

“You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.”

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Sometime back there was a brief flash in the pan to make contemporary taxpayers pay for the slavery imposed on blacks until the passage of the Constitutional amendment granting their freedom from chattel slavery but not releasing them from the tax and regulation plantation that is America. The reparations movement sought to redistribute current wealth to any Americans who could prove their ancestors were in chains and they would be granted reparations or a payment for restoration into the original condition they were seeking.

I am always unsympathetic to any forcible wealth transfer and especially one that would be fraught with the peril of fraud and the creation of yet another nightmarish bureaucracy charged with imposing tolls on living and breathing human beings to be vacuumed out of their wallets and tucked into others’ coffers after the government takes its usual sizeable “maintenance fee” to administer such a program.

There was one laudatory effect of such a proposal though; nothing focuses people’s attention more than the potential hijacking of their wealth or rights for specious political reasons such as the latest economic illiteracy and fiscal cliff diving that characterized the recent wholesale takeover of healthcare by the government. The reparations movement did the same thing, nothing would have focused the national race conversation more than the shenanigans I just described. The addition of yet another government theft scheme to rob from Paul to pay Peter.

Now we are facing down a lame duck administration and all its apparatchiks in the fight to keep guns in the hands of the private citizens (or subjects depending on your point of view). After a four year silence on the weapons possession question, the rhetorical cavalcade from the Offal Office and its collaborators in the government and media are clamoring to extinguish all such rights in the march toward turning America into a curious amalgam of modern Great Britain, the former USSR and more regrettable aspects of tin-pot dictatorships around the planet that are terminally frightened by well armed citizens.

The call for repeal of the Second Amendment is nothing new, a cursory internet search will reveal hundred of opinion-editorials and the usual suspects calling for this to happen; they, of course, hail from the government supremacist viewpoints of the collectivist keening and whining that is the national media voice in America on both Fox and CNN.

I am calling for repeal because I think every gun law on the books is wrong without exception and they all need to be eliminated so this appeal is rather lonesome and hails from an individualist perspective that is skeptical of all state power. Those who have read my work in the past know that I am not only a Constitutional skeptic but believe it is the machine to create and expand big government. I happen to think the “Founder’s lexicon” has lost all descriptive power such as the term “unconstitutional” and Constitutional, they both mean the same thing in a country that regulates and taxes nearly every form of human transaction without exception.

A movement to repeal would reset the entire conversation, bring honesty to the dialog since the stark reality of absolute disarmament would be imminent and possibly lead to revolutionary arborists tending the Tree of Liberty.

The recent massacres involving various madmen, big pharma patients and other human detritus have set the usual suspects into a flurry of activity to dust off the old prohibitionist bromides that have worked so well in the past like the banishment of alcohol, drugs, poverty and other such crusades that always exsanguinate the subject populations but enrich and expand the political class and its legions of constabulary. Prohibition is a jobs program for cops. The repeal of the Volstead Amendment prohibiting alcohol in America on December 5th, 1933 briefly took the wind out of the sails of American law enforcement but the creation of the 1930 Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the 1934 National Firearms Act quickly built on the utter failure of the Volstead Act by seeing lightning could strike twice and give a new lease on life to the lifeblood of every nation-state: police employment.

“When the present administration took office ten countries had ratified the Geneva Narcotic Limitation Convention. The United States was one of these ten…. It was my privilege, as President, to proclaim, on that day, that this treaty had become effective throughout the jurisdiction of the United States….On Jan. 1, 1933, only nine nations had registered their ratification of the limitation treaty. On Jan. 1, 1935, only nine States had adopted the uniform State statute. As 1933 witnessed ratification of the treaty by thirty-one additional nations, so may 1935 witness the adoption of the uniform drug act by at least thirty-one more states, thereby placing interstate accord abreast of international accord, to the honor of the legislative bodies of our States and for the promotion of the welfare of our people and the peoples of other lands.”

—Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 1935 in a radio message

I would suggest that there is only one way to truly focus the debate on civilian disarmament in the United States. In the larger picture, this is yet another attack by the Federal government and its subsidiary political agents in the states on yet another aspect of self-sufficiency. Whether it is food production such as raw milk, education such as homeschooling or the ability of its subjects to defend themselves, the government will always take a dim view of such behavior. Cops are the tyrant’s cattle prod and when the peer weapons competency of citizens starts to amtch or exceed that of the praetorians, all governments get very nervous and use every opportunity to strip this capability from their subject popualtions in the vast feed lots they administer.

So let’s stop beating around the bush. If the NRA were serious about firearms freedom, they would spend every last dime dismantling every root and branch of Federal control legislation from the numerous congressional Acts that abridge small arms freedom to the enforcement agencies of these bad laws. But they don’t because then they would achieve their objective and close shop. They would be unable to continuing gallivanting around the halls of Congress wining and dining psychopaths and sociopaths of both parties. The NRA wants government control of weapons otherwise they would mount ceaseless attacks on every article of civilian disarmament legislation and legal decisions that emerge.

At the Federal level, the only way to end this is to move to repeal the Second Amendment. National Prohibition had been repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment which contains two short but important sentences:

Section 1: The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2: The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

For the purposes of the Second Amendment, it will read:

Section 1: The second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2: The transportation, importation, possession and bearing of any firearms into any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of weapons, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

Nothing will focus the country better than the national debate that would ensue once the civilian disarmament lobby dropped the mask and finally entered into an honest conversation about the actual end-state they seek. Unlike the current divide-and-conquer strategies that the government leverages within the gun community such as pitting hunters and shot-gunners against black gun aficionados; instead of simmering in the pot as the incremental forces of the gun prohibitionists gain traction inch by inch. The Repeal would bring the entire agenda into crystal clarity and the fight and demarcation lines would no longer be subject to obfuscation, political gamesmanship and dissembling. The agenda would be stark and distilled to its essence:

Will a country that strips its citizens of individual armament be as safe and trouble free as the civilian disarmament advocates claim? Can American exceptionalism make it the ahistorical example where liberty and freedom reigns in a country where every peer weapons capability is imbalanced toward a government monopoly on small arms in its police and military? Lastly, can the US government be trusted to do the right thing?

Nothing will answer that question more clearly than a movement to repeal the Second Amendment.

That national conversation will be revealing and scintillating to say the least.

“A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.”

Publisher’s Note: As most everyone is aware, I am not a Christian nor an atheist yet I am surrounded by friends and neighbors who tend to this religionist disposition. While I think some of the Christian beliefs in the system are used to excuse or rationalize the state, there is a small but growing number of Christians who are genuinely seeking freedom in this mortal coil and using their scripture to do so. Steve is one of those. -BB

…And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free…As a Christian Voluntaryist who resides in the land of the ‘fee’ and the home of the ‘slave’, I have a great interest in knowing the Truth. We all know that every person has their own selfish idea as to what true freedom and liberty consists of, and this equally true among Christians. I wish to examine the idea of Anarchist Christians, whether such a breed even exists on earth, or if the Neo-conservative ‘utopia’ purported is ultimately Heaven on Earth. “They hate us for our freedom,” was a past President’s mantra and to this I retort that there is no one more hopelessly enslaved than those that falsely believe they are free. Counterfeiting ‘government’ is big business as we already know. Please explain the labyrinth of Man-made Federal, State and Local ‘Laws’ that one must know in order to stay out of prison, and how that somehow makes us free? Orwell’s “Slavery is Freedom” rings a familiar tone. This author had a close brush with the law when such sent an item to Canada in exercising free commerce. Well, unbeknownst this was a no-no as such item is regulated under a not-so-well-known list of Federal restrictions regulating export. A knock on the door ensues and I was happily introduced to the DHS / Customs Enforcement. Fortunately, after many days of toil and nights of worry, this issue was resolved after a simple phone call to the agent. Why all of the drama you wonder? It all happened because I did not have firm grasp of the litany of Federal Laws requiring a license to export said item. If this is freedom, I consider it to be a pretty lousy version.

Others have not been so fortunate. Some are still staring at the innards of a Federal pen with 8 years left to go. And with special thanks to USA Inc. and the Corrections Corporation of America, there are still vacancies for all those who wish to visit.

It is my hope that we can all start this discussion with the basic understanding that Anarchy is synonymous with Abolitionism or Voluntaryism. This is the abolishing of the centrist State and that the virtue of self-ownership and accountability is the highest moral virtue. Let us at once dispense of the distorted view of Anarchy as representing nothing more than mass hordes of out of control thugs aimlessly throwing Molotov cocktails at innocents. I believe with every fiber of my being that anarchism is the only life path to follow as a believer in Jesus Christ. In fact going further, it is the ONLY philosophy that I can see that is consistent with Scripture. It is a fact that most of the Evangelical Christians in America vote on the Right side of the ticket. They will even vote for the mythical lesser of two evils. What kind of testimony is it when a Christian votes for a lesser, evilcandidate? What makes him an authority on evil? What credibility is there? What is being stated in essence is we will not steal, but will only kill. Is it ‘less’ evil to only invade two countries as opposed to three, believe that abortion is wrong, EXCEPT in instances of rape? Or even, pro-death penalty for that matter? It is better to let 3 guilty men go free, than to convict and execute one innocent man. Thanks to the disinformation arm of the Government, a large number of Christians now want the U.S. to invade Iran. Remember the command to love thy neighbor as thyself? Apparently, many modern Christ-followers do not consider Iran to be their neighbor and therefore does not apply. My Bible does not except us from this obligation and is applicable to all peoples of all religions and races. Christians would be a better testimony if they (we) were consistent in our dealings with other people. We may actually win others to Christ when we apply Anarchism to our lives.

In the Garden of Eden, The devil cast a semantic war of words upon the first man and woman. He employed a manipulative Neurolinguistic Programming-style, positive thinking approach in stating,” Yea, hath God said…? upon Eve. Within the final conflict of humanity we see that in order for folks to be deceived on a massive scale, there must be a war on the meanings of words and / or information. A twisting of words, if you will. The books ‘1984’ and ‘Brave New World’ proposed two different plans of attack. The former was a restricting of information and the latter was such an onslaught of information, so much so that one could not effectively wade through the vast ocean of words and definitions to make sense of it all.

Anarchy is one word whose definition has been demonized to such a degree that it is used to be synonymous with ‘chaos.’ Other words whose demonization come to mind?Discrimination, Extremism, Fundamentalism, Compound, Militia, Terrorism, Racist, etc.

All Voluntaryists would do themselves a great favor by studying a Book known as 1st Samuel Chapter 8 in the Old Testament as read from the Authorized King James Version. It is in this chapter that mankind singularly curses himself with Government when God had already given his people Self-Government / Ownership. They wanted to have a king ‘like the other nations’ and several times in two chapters it says that God was displeased with their desire for a King.

Georges Lechartier wrote that “The true founder of anarchy was Jesus Christ and … the first anarchist society was that of the apostles.”

Somewhere along the line the definition of Anarchy was flipped to mean ‘disorder’, when previously it simply meant to have self-ownership. My fellow believers with whom I am close with are die-hard Minarchists. They want the full benefits of self-ownership while all the while feeding the illegal Income tax system and some type of supreme government. Then out of the other side of the mouth, they cry, “Nullification! States’ Rights! Secession!” It’s like giving money to a drunk on the street. He smells like booze, he slurs his speech, but you still give him money. Why? Because, “He told me he needed something to eat. It’s not my problem if he spends his money on booze.” Then he drives a car, kills a family and you financed it! What they are not seeing is that taxation is slavery. Just try not filing the all-powerful 1040 form and see how many letters will start showing up in your mailbox. It is coerced taxation. A cursory study of 1st Samuel Chapter 8 would easily confirm for you that having a Monarchy was a curse, brought on by heady, impatient people upset with the Prophet Samuel’s sons. They already HAD the perfect set up, being self-governing in nature and the most lenient. Their impulsivity is the similar rush-job that resulted in the calumniation of the Articles of Confederation and ended with the deification of the Hamiltonian Constitution. HOW could you SAY that about the CONSTITUTION? Easily. Because this document either created the Federal Insanity we have today or has been powerless to prevent it.

There are Three General examples that describe Anarchy. For the sake of brevity, I will only examine one of these in this essay.
1. Do not initiate violence against anyone.
In The Gospel of Luke 3:14, it states. ”
And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.”

Now, fast forward roughly 2 millennia and examine this in the light of real world conflict. As Orwell so eloquently prosed, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” The modern LEO-Complex is the exact, polar opposite of Jesus’ command. The amount of violence that soldier-police employ is extreme, leading up to the expiration of the individual, and all in the name of ‘Officer-Safety.’ It is blatantly obvious that individuals within the modern Armed Forces are obligated to obey this command. But just because Jesus did NOT address the evils of the modern Military that maims, tortures, imprisons or kills different races around the world inthis verse; does not imply that a man (or woman) should even remain in a wicked and morally corrupt Armed Service. He starts with people, where they are, and then works onward from there. Christians are commanded to reprove the unfruitful works of darkness. Is it fruitful or loving to employ 20mm cannons against a mini-van of Iraqis, including children? If you have ever beheld the online account of this incident, it would not take to long wonder if such behavior is the fruit of the video-game generation? The two helo-pilots were hastily begging for permission to engage them, and did so with horrific lethality. Heartless.

If we were alive in the early 1900s, you could just ask the South African Boers what they thought of the British missionary Imperialist David Livingstone. A strong argument could be made that Livingstone, of all people, intiated conflict through his involvement in affairs of the Transvaal. His fellow Christian Boers were a rugged, peaceful, self-sufficient agrarian people who bravely fought the British Empire through the years 1899 – 1902. Boer President Paul Kruger said that, while they admired Livingstone for his dedication to the Missionary work for Christ, they disdained the fact that he was emboldening a nation which ended up committing of atrocities against those Boer Christians! It was the first genocide on record in the 20th Century, in the name of Conquest, and a travesty of the highest order. I believe the Boer Society were much closer to the Anarchist life than we are today, although they did have a President who was a genuine heart felt friend of the Afrikaan people.

These two general ideas below are two others that can be looked into at another time.
2. Fulfill all contracts entered into voluntarily to the letter.

3 Your self-ownership cannot be abridged without your consent.

A Stranger in a Strange Land: Living Stateless Within the State

How does Christian Anarchy measure in the real world?

One needn’t look any further than the Amish / Mennonite communities in Rural Amerika. Their wisdom is impressive on an unparalleled level, even their refusing to be photographed. While this may have changed, they used to consider any picture of themselves off limits and this certainly has certain benefits in a hyper-surveillance society as well. They freely exchange their goods and services in peace and assist each other in many ways. Now while it is not improbable that they have their own problems to deal with, we can conclude that they have a living, working model of living untethered to the State.

UNINCORPORATE – This means, get out of major metropolitan areas and move to more rural locations. The Reign of Terror which occurred in France from 1793 to 1794, did not affect those living in the countryside to the same degree as those residing in Paris. Learn to be self-sufficient; grow your own food, build your own home and be a frontiersman of sorts.

Followers of Jesus, please stop paying lip service to the state and confusing your allegiance to the state as being obedient to Romans 13. To the contrary, God himself has nothing good to say about those who will not stand against evil no matter what form it shows itself. It does come with a price, though, as many in ages past have found out. The author of the classic ‘Pilgrims Progress’ John Bunyan spent many years in jail (off and on for 12 years), all because he would not take a license to preach the Gospel. Every Voluntaryist, whether Christian or not, should develop a profound respect for Baptists such as Roger Williams who fought for the right to freely choose your own religion. Agnostics likewise owe these men a debt of gratitude as the set the tone in for freedom of conscience in Old America.

Christian Anarchism is a redundant statement. In closing, let’s remember for posterity the words of Lechartier.
“The true founder of anarchy was Jesus Christ and … the first anarchist society was that of the apostles.”

“We have a weapon more powerful… than any in the whole arsenal of the British Empire! That weapon… is our refusal!”

– Michael Collins

The police in America have proven once again that they are above the law and have a license to kill as the charred remains of Christopher Dorner were cooling in the cabin in California. The more thuggish aspects of the constabulary were on the mainstream news despite the twisted and sycophantic relationship of the press in lionizing tyranny everyday in the hero worship of the thin political black and blue line.

The readers who have read my essays over the years are aware of the case I have made for why cops are the primary danger to all individual freedom and liberty in any tax jurisdiction on Earth. No political bad actor in any account of human history could deprive anyone of liberty or enforce tyranny absent a police force. The vicious and nonsensical drug war has so retarded human progress with the caging and maiming and killing of hundreds of thousands of Americans and permeated the entire American society with laws piled on laws to do everything from making every financial transaction transparent to the rulers for “money laundering” to the creation of a legal system whose only sense of justice is in name only, I am surprised America even continues to chug along..

Two important questions have surfaced after the Dorner tragedy; first, have the police in California stepped over a Rubicon with the summary execution of Dorner in broad daylight?

The increasing militarization of police and the literal criminalization of everything has seen the rise of the fabled and dreaded Orwellian state where no one is safe and if one pays close attention to what just happened in the mountains of California, you discover that all judicial processes and civil rights niceties were overlooked and the police immediately murdered Dorner by burning him alive. They were even so brazen as to casually issue the orders to fire the cabin most likely under the guise of officer safety, the curious mantra that gives the police their license to kill and get away with it. The officer safety conceit releases them from all responsibility that saddles the averages citizen in self-defense thus the hundreds of thousands of videos on the internet and written and oral testimonials of victims of this officer safety madness. Will Grigg, the most able chronicler of police misbehavior in America, has already made the rock solid case of just how risk-free and safe is the occupation of the praetorians in America.

Dorner was hunted in the fashion he was because he was not one of the 98 percent of bad cops that give the two percent a bad name. The media is between a rock and a hard place because if Dorner were a “right-wing” man who did not belong to an Federally accredited victim group whose opinions of gun possession were quite the opposite of his manifesto, he would be the poster child of why the police are not only right but should immediately move to phase two of seizure and confiscation of all cosmetically offensive weapons in individual citizen’s hands who are not wearing a statist costume of one stripe or another. But Dorner is Diane Feinstein in male drag with the usual government supremecist superstitions that so pollute the minds of our rulers and their sycophantic media. The notable exception is that the Senator would not deign to handle weapons herself (except the pistol she has a permit for) and leaves those to her peons in her security detail.

Quite clearly, the police across America will be further emboldened to continue the kind of murder spree which just happened in California. Indiscriminately shooting up vehicles with occupants who bear no resemblance to their “suspect”, roughing up citizens at their leisure and, of course, employing the very weapons most wish to strip the Mundanes of. We are fortunate in America that in case after case, the absurdly poor quality marksmanship and weapons handling of the cops in the nineteen thousand law enforcement departments of America has saved lives but more tragically led to the lead poisoning of many innocent bystanders who then sue the cops and the taxpayers who are occupied by the police are forced to cough up millions to pay for the armed thuggery and malpractice.

The second and greater question that I hope becomes a meme in the American future: what would Michael Collins do?

What the LAPD and more importantly, the Federal government have not taken a measure of is the unintended consequences of unleashing the million plus statist goons in blue not only in the zealous attempted murder spree on view in California but combined with the looming threats of disarmament of the populace may be an uncorking of a genie the government will regret letting loose.

In California, one man made the law enforcers fill their pants, cower in their homes with protective details surrounding them and led to the aforementioned (comedic if not tragic) Kalifornia Keystone Kops antics where seven detectives let loose a fusillade of rounds into a newspaper delivery truck not even matching the description of Dorner’s vehicle and hit the two Hispanic women with two rounds and perforate the truck. Fortunately, the legendary and widespread abysmal weapons proficiency of the thin black and blue line saved their lives.

Michael Collins faced a similar foe in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century as England was closing on the eight hundredth anniversary of their occupation of Ireland. Collins adduced correctly that the locus and focus of all alien governance in Ireland was the law enforcement arm of the English state augmented by British military forces.

Michael Collins was what one could suppose is any government most dangerous adversary. He was a practical visionary. Not only did he envision a free Ireland, he had a concrete plan to get there. Like Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry before him and Giap after him, he blended a unique talent for the political chess game and calculus of violence that would enable the resisters to overwhelm the will and outmatch the ferocity of the British occupiers. While a contemporary of T. E. Lawrence, they did not know each other but crafted an eerily similar game-plan to defeat their foes. Collins knew that the “golden hour” for independence and all the planets aligning for the political tectonic shift were on the horizon and he simply had to arrange the events and orchestrate the players. Those six years between 1916 and 1922 would prove to be the precise moment when the Irish could loose the English fetters that had harnessed their nation for nearly 800 years.

Collins worked as a clerk in London from 1906 until he returned to Ireland in 1916. He fought in the Easter Rising, was arrested and held in detention at Frongoch, Merioneth, but was released in December 1916. In December 1918 he was one of 27 out of 73 elected Sinn Féin members (most of whom were in jail) present when Dáil ireann (Irish Assembly) convened in Dublin and declared for the republic. Their elected president,Eamon de Valera, and vice president, Arthur Griffith, were both in prison. Hence, much responsibility fell on Collins, who became first the Dáil’s minister of home affairs and, after arranging for de Valera’s escape from Lincoln jail (February 1919), minister of finance. It was as director of intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), however, that he became famous. As chief planner and coordinator of the revolutionary movement, Collins organized numerous attacks on police and the assassination in November 1920 of many of Britain’s leading intelligence agents in Ireland. He headed the list of men wanted by the British, who placed a price of 10,000 on his head.

After the truce of July 1921, Griffith and Collins were sent to London by de Valera as the principal negotiators for peace (October–December 1921). The treaty of Dec. 6, 1921, was signed by Collins in the belief that it was the best that could be obtained for Ireland at the time and in the full awareness that he might be signing his own death warrant. It gave Ireland dominion status, but its provision for an oath of allegiance to the British crown was unacceptable to de Valera and other republican leaders. Collins’s persuasiveness helped win acceptance for the treaty by a small majority in the Dáil, and a provisional government was formed under his chairmanship, but effective administration was obstructed by the mutinous activities of the anti-treaty republicans. Collins refrained from taking action against his former comrades until IRA insurgents seized the Four Courts in Dublin and civil war became inevitable. William Thomas Cosgrave replaced Collins as chairman when the latter assumed command of the army in mid-July 1922 in order to crush the insurgency. About five weeks later, while on a tour of military inspection, Collins was shot to death by anti-treaty IRA.

Collins was the right man at the right time in the right historical place. Absent his strategic & operational brilliance, tenacity and charisma, Irish independence may not have happened. In the larger schema of history, this became yet another chapter in the long succession of nation creation and destruction that has marched through Western history from it Hellenic roots in ancient Greece. Not only was Collins seceding from a larger tax jurisdiction but he was creating a wholly independent tax jurisdiction that would go on to become an odd amalgam of capitalism and socialism that would completely collapse economically at the beginning of the 21st century.

Key aspects of his campaign were the careful grooming of auxiliary organizations in the mass base of the greater population, a consistent and wholesale campaign to legitimize Irish independence in the minds of the Irish and his charismatic leadership.

He also employed a savage violence that led to the events of 21 November, 1920 when he effectively killed and destroyed the essential elements and personnel of the UK intelligence organs in Ireland proper. T. Ryle Dwyer, author of The Squad and the Intelligence Operations of Michael Collins quotes Collins:

“My one intention was the destruction of the undesirables who continued to make miserable the lives of ordinary decent citizens. I have proof enough to assure myself of the atrocities which this gang of spies and informers have committed. If I had a second motive it was no more than a feeling such as I would have for a dangerous reptile. By their destruction the very air is made sweeter. For myself, my conscience is clear. There is no crime in detecting in wartime the spy and the informer. They have destroyed without trial. I have paid them back in their own coin.”

Most historians agree this crippled British intelligence operations (in this case, the Cairo Gang) from this point onward and made the withdrawal of British interests inevitable. Absent the sophisticated network of spies and informants, the war would be fought blind. More atrocities in response to this were visited on the Irish by constabulary and military forces and this merely stiffened the spine of the major and minor elements of the Irish resistance. That same day, British forces fired on spectators at an Irish football match which left seven dead and dozens wounded.

David Leeson in “Death in the Afternoon: The Croke Park Massacre, 21 November 1920” describes part of the aftermath.

“Two military courts of inquiry into the massacre were held, and one found that “the fire of the RIC was carried out without orders and exceeded the demands of the situation.” Major-General Boyd, the officer commanding Dublin District, added that in his opinion, “the firing on the crowd was carried out without orders, was indiscriminate, and unjustifiable, with the exception of any shooting which took place inside the enclosure.” The findings of these courts of inquiry were suppressed by the British Government, and only came to light in 2000.”

The Cairo Gang was responsible for surveilling and torturing a number of innocents and genuine guerrillas and Collins know that making them dead would send a message. It did. Fighting would intensify and British response and overreach to the incident would lead to the withdrawal of all British forces in a little over two years. One can debate the morality and efficacy of assassinating constabulary and military forces but the Irish justified their actions in much the same way one would put down a rabid dog. There are instances where defensive violence is the answer. Kirby Ferris provides an interesting perspective on this question:

“Perhaps the world isn’t the way we wish it would be. We all might wish that evil men could be persuaded from their vile behavior with bleeding heart entreaties, a kiss on the cheek, or proper toilet training. But it ain’t that way, folks, Pacifism is a sickness, an actual moral perversity, and dangerous when its effects spread to anyone else beside the pacifist. You may choose to walk to the cattle car, but damn you if you let your children be led up the ramp. You must never allow any group or government to steal your right to exercise armed lethal force in a just situation.”

Collins is instructive and the perfect storm brewing in America bodes ill for the over-reach of police forces in America. There are a myriad of cultural hurricane indicators gathering. When one looks at the Rubicon crossed in California, the gravely ill economy and the deep and dark pent-up rage against law enforcement by the tens of millions of families ravaged by the drug war and the interminable harassment of ten of millions of citizens for victimless crimes and the increasing militarization of cops, the recipe for confrontation is not far away.

And it won’t be one man.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

The Los Angeles Police Department is in the grips of a challenging moment as it seeks to eliminate, read kill, one of its own gone rogue, Chris Dorner. The curious thing concerning this incident is the one undeniable fact, mainstream media has no choice but to cover an event they would prefer to fade to black. The cops and media are both caught in a conundrum. It is not the fact this guy is on a rampage of murder and mayhem, but he is not a right-wing bitter clinger. How do the cops, cop apologists and main stream media spin this left-wing racist, socialist government supporter, anti-gun cop killer into someone they can use to confiscate lawful citizens weapons?

The first question is what set this loon off on his killing spree. He posted his manifesto on Facebook for all to see and analyze. http://wap.myfoxla.com/w/main/story/84473837/ I find it intriguing he posted this on my birthday. A small present perhaps to me showing what one dedicated man can do to established authoritarian rule if willing to sacrifice his life? I issue my thanks for letting me see the results though I do not agree to his tactics. Killing innocents is not the approach of a libertarian such as me, but I digress. Mr. Dorner states in his manifesto, “

In 8/07 I reported an officer (Ofcr. Teresa Evans/now a Sergeant), for kicking a suspect (excessive force) during a Use of Force while I was assigned as a patrol officer at LAPD’s Harbor Division. While cuffing the suspect, (Christopher Gettler), Evans kicked the suspect twice in the chest and once in the face. The kick to the face left a visible injury on the left cheek below the eye. Unfortunately after reporting it to supervisors and investigated by PSB (internal affairs investigator Det. Villanueva/Gallegos), nothing was done. I had broken their supposed “Blue Line”. Unfortunately, It’s not JUST US, it’s JUSTICE!!! In fact, 10 months later on 6/25/08, after already successfully completing probation, acquiring a basic Post Certificate, and Intermediate Post Certificate, I was relieved of duty by the LAPD while assigned to patrol at Southwest division. It is clear as day that the department retaliated toward me for reporting Evans for kicking Mr. Christopher Gettler. The department stated that I had lied and made up the report that Evans had kicked the suspect.

The LAPD is now crapping enough bricks to build a new pyramid. It could be the 8th wonder of the world, a dung tower built and dedicated to the fear of individuals generally only accustomed to dishing it out on the population. It is an example of turning the tables on a group who operate without fear of retaliation for their brutality. Yes, there are limited cases where a cop is brought to face the music but generally this only takes place if the citizenry provides irrefutable video evidence of their actions. As stated by a friend of mine, the 98% of bad cops making the 2% of good cops look bad. The point he makes if there really is only a small percentage of “bad” cops abusing their power all cops are indicted because of their refusal to expose fellow cops, not crossing the thin blue line making them all guilty participants. Peruse the available pictures and stories available on the Internet and gauge the reaction of the police. Fear has driven these gun happy cops over the deep end in the pursuit to terminate Mr. Dorner.

Kalifornia, prepare to pay as these idiots walk scot free. Not surprising, the LAPD is attempting to buy these women off with trinkets. LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith says the department’s Chief Charlie Beck met with the women in their Torrance home Saturday to apologize and tell them he had arranged for someone to donate a new pickup truck. They continue in the police statement to classify the shooting as an accidental shooting. This is absurd at face value. Did the rounds accidentally fire themselves? Almost 50 accidental discharges and only two accidental hits on target for these highly trained professionals. Only in the land of cop reality could this possibly be construed an accidental shooting. Beyond the realm of rational thought. Maybe it is time for Kalifornians to question whether the uniformed thugs should have their cosmetically offensive assault rifles with large capacity magazines taken from them. It is apparent from this behavior the results would be a safer community. Misidentified, cars, trees, and surrounding neighborhoods would be a safer place, at least we know two Hispanic women who might agree. I can only think of a few reasons the LAPD would offer this vehicle and the women would accept. The legal counsel for the women is incompetent, the legal counsel feels threatened, or the LAPD will attempt to add language to the acceptance document absolving them of all future claims from the women. Buyer beware.

There are a few takeaways from this event. First, one determined shooter has scared the living daylights out of the authorities in southern Kalifornia and paralyzed normal operations. The authorities will not even release the number of “law” enforcement agents roaming the streets, highways, and now mountains searching for Mr. Dorner. He has them in such a quandary they are no longer allowed to patrol without being in teams. Second, he has been able to effectively elude them because he understands their tactics and Standard Operating Procedures. Third, everyone is in danger while this guy is on the loose. Not from him since he identified his enemies, cops, but from the “law” enforcement agencies. Fourth and paramount in my mind, one guy did this to the establishment. Imagine for a minute multiplying this scenario by 100, 1000, 5000, 10000 angered citizens as the government attempts to circumvent our right to bear arms. I do not mention 2nd Amendment Rights in this since it is irrelevant. Bearing arms is our birthright, endowed on us by our creator. Our right to protect family and property usurp any manmade document endorsing the ability to protect life, family and property. Actions on a scale this large would cripple the government. They could not field a force large enough to address the resolve of this many angry citizens without violating the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

The question begs to be answered in light of this event. Will the government gun grabbing zealots recognize the danger they face? Will they be able to comprehend the simmering anger floating just below the surface in the country? Will they extrapolate the numerical advantage this angry population poses to an out of control tyranny? Based on Kalifornia’s latest proposed 10 page gun grabbing idiocy I doubt they understand. Are California Democrats creating ground zero for the next revolutionary war? This event is one to watch as it plays out. What if he had simply had two coordinated partners in this drama? Scary thought to think about if you are a cop or mainstream media mouthpiece. What if it would have been media figures as the targets instead of cops?

If the US is capbale of anything, it is the author of an imperfect future in which the best of intentions always sems to yield bad fruit. In order to project the potential consequences of what the American defeat in Afghanistan will look like, it is instructive to reflect on the US involvement in Vietnam. History certainly does not repeat itself but it certainly rhymes over time.

Could the United States have secured a free South Vietnam? Did the United States have all the necessary political and military capital to prosecute a major land conflict in Southeast Asia and create a self-sustaining nation neutral or beneficial to American security interests in the area? I would suggest the United States did not and will not for the foreseeable future have the capability to answer the latter in the affirmative and therefore the answer to the former question is a definitive no. America, despite it formidable might with no technological peer will lose.

The Vietminh in Saigon accidentally gunned down LTC A. Peter Dewey of the office of Strategic Services (OSS) in September 1945. What is important to know from this solitary death is that Ho Chi Minh and his Vietminh regretted this and did what they could to atone. Uncle Ho had his finger on the international pulse both within the ranks of the small and large C comintern and the importance of crafting and staying on message first and consistently. Dewey would not be the first American to fall there. He would be followed by tens of thousands of other dead and hundreds of thousands of physically and mentally injured Americans during the long American night in Vietnam that would emerge within a generation.

The North Vietnamese and its attendant unconventional legions were tough, resourceful, well-trained and consistently had their eyes on the end-state Ho Chi Minh sought – a unified ideological peninsula with like-minded neighbors that suborned all colonial influence to self-determination.

The French had a robust religious and commercial presence in Vietnam since the 17th century but it remained of minor influence due to the constant in-fighting and civil wars between Vietnamese rulers and the sheer breadth and depth of the country. In 1861, things came to a head and the French militarily invested themselves in the country and established a vigorous colony. Vietnamese resistance to the French was to maintain a low boil, robust renewal during the Japanese occupation in WWII and literally see the French kicked out of the country after the disaster in Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The French were to suffer the same fate with eerie parallels in Algeria by 1962.Throughout its long history, the Vietnamese had bested Mongols, Chinese and the French. The Americans would be next.

Ho Chi Minh, hoping for U.S. support, confided to an OSS agent that he would welcome “a million American soldiers… but no French”. Giap echoed that theme, telling a Hanoi crowd to regard the United States as a “good friend” because “it is a democracy without territorial ambitions” In early September, U.S. intelligence agents in Hanoi reported to Truman’s Secretary of State, James Byrnes, but the Vietnamese were “determined to maintain their independence even at the cost of their lives,” since they have nothing to lose and all to gain”. But the United States and its wartime partners, inexorably if not deliberately, preceded to restore French rule.” [1]

This would be the other nail in the coffin for US ambition in the region. America’s cultural intelligence for the region was near zero and the threat of a communist “domino effect” hastened decisions that would haunt American top policy makers for decades.

America had competent ground forces but they had a history of mal-adaption to new forms of warfare and they were married up to a political vacuum in Washington DC that capitalized on the American temperament to engineer a solution even when no problem was soluble in the equation. The infamous McNamara would bring in his wunderkind who would condemn many thousands of soldiers to misery and death and never manage to erect a strategic framework that was either viable or politically sustainable. The war was not lost at home, in the media or on the peninsula of Vietnam. The war was lost because an outside aggressor had never defeated the Vietnamese. The American war was lost in 1954 before a single American boot sank in Vietnamese mud. Dien Ben Phu proved that indigenous soldiers on their own turf could still defeat first-world forces supported by a sophisticated logistical infrastructure indefinitely. Ho Chi Minh and General Giap managed to harness nationalism and communism to the native hardiness of the indigenous people in Vietnam and crate an unstoppable war machine that could absorb astonishing punishment and come out fighting on the other side.

In an interview with Bernard Fall’s widow, she relates how Dr. Fall, having witnessed both French and American incursions in the country had pinned down one of the formative problems:

“Dorothy Fall: Probably. When Bernard traveled to Vietnam the first time, while the French were fighting, he went to see a French military man who showed him a map and said, “Well, there are just a few little Communist enclaves scattered here and there, but generally we have the countryside under control.” But when Bernard would discuss this with his Vietnamese colleagues [at the university there], they would all laugh and say: “No, no, no! The Communists rule that area!”

And so Bernard did something ingenious: He said, well, if the Vietnamese government is really in control, let’s see what the taxes indicated. And so he went to the Vietnamese tax collection office in Hanoi and studied the village tax rolls and realized, “Gee, well, they’re not being paid in this village, or in that one, or in that one. Then who are they paying taxes to?” Obviously, someone other than their French-supported national government!

Then he did the same with the schoolteachers. Teachers in Vietnam were assigned by the central government, but he discovered that the same places that did not pay taxes also weren’t being assigned teachers from Hanoi. So he came back and had one map of the areas the French said they controlled, and another based on the data he’d collected. The French had a map of white with little red dots, and he had one that was practically all red. This was in 1953, and a year later the French had been driven out!

Then, in 1957, he was in Vietnam when Ngo Dinh Diem was president, again claiming that the situation was totally under control. But Bernard would read the paper and note that there was a village chief being killed here and one being killed there. This was just a matter of reading the newspaper systematically! But he would see that these men were being replaced by Communist cadres. And again, he drew a map and showed that, indeed, the Viet Cong were infiltrating in the south.” [2]

As evidenced by post-Vietnam military adventures, the US political establishment is unaccustomed and resistant to the prosecution of long war conflicts that involve irregular warfare and unconventional conflict. While the US may have vacillated and jumped from one strategic lodestar to another, the “enemy strategy can be outlined quickly, since it was simple, concise and consistent…the opposition knew what they wanted to do they had the initiative, and they had the winning combination…Controlling and communizing all of Indochina have always been the foes overriding objectives.” [3]

Even American LTG Hal Moore saw the writing on the wall with his “tactical victory” in Ia Drang in November 1965. He was a Francophone scholar and reader and had investigated the accounts of the French post-WWII experience in Vietnam before even stepping foot on Vietnamese soil.

America simply did not have the industrial depth or the political will to defeat the Communist invasion of South Vietnam and would never achieve the upper hand in pushing back the North much less stemming the tide south. It was written in blood well before the American landed in force.

“But the Vietminh’s logistical accomplishments achieved in deployment of artillery and troops through the difficult terrain and the potency of rival weaponry remain a centerpiece of the history of this battle and a proud record in Hanoi’s military annals. These artillery weapons battered “the enemy” and in March destroyed the airfields connecting their supplies and reinforcements. General Vo Nguyen Giap, who commanded the Vietminh, summed up the ferocity of the DRV’s assaults when he asserted pointedly: “We decided to take the enemy by the throat at Dien Ben Phu.” [4]

Giap would go on to defeat the Americans over a grueling conflict to kick out yet another alien invader on the peninsula.

Since the end of WWII, American strategy in the prosecution of land conflicts still cligs to quaint anachronisms of power that have nothing to do with modern conflicts such as the seizure of capitals and the assumption that enough exposure to American ideals will win over the mass base. Nothing could be further from the truth in Afghanistan and there are some eeries parallels between the unstoppable nature of the Communist ideal in Vietnam and the stell in the spine of Afghan resistance to both occupation by anyone and the resilience transmitted by Islamic faith.

Afghanistan will look the same. How America characterizes the defaet; ony time will tell.